Friday, May 8, 2015

'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 162 miles down and 1,637 miles to go

Chetwood is on the right side of this map.

I
continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging nine
more miles since my last update. I walked/jogged three miles on Sunday, three
miles on Wednesday and three miles today (Friday). So far, I’ve logged 162
total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 1,637 more miles
to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about nine percent of
the total trip.

In
relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the ninth day of his trip. I left off on my
last update on Day 9 at Mile 153. Day 9 is Oct. 1 on the Middle Earth calendar,
and it’s the second day of the voyage from Bree. In all, Frodo and his
companions cover 16 miles on Dec. 9.

At
Mile 147, the group begins to head east as the ground begins to drop slowly. It’s
a quiet an peaceful day. I’ve got one more mile to go before I reach the next
significant landmark at Mile 163, which is where the group ends Day 9 by camping
in the eastern Chetwood.

For
those of you reading this for the first time, I began this “Walk to Mordor”
fitness challenge on Jan. 1. Using a book called “The Atlas of Middle-Earth” by
Karen Wynn Fonstad, fans of “The Lord of the Rings” created this challenge by
mapping out Frodo’s fictional trek to Mordor, calculating the total distance at
1,799 miles. They also used the original "Lord of the Rings" text to
outline the journey, so you can follow their route by keeping up with your
total mileage.

The
folks who worked out the nuts and bolts of this virtual journey have divided it
into four parts. It’s 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell, 462 miles from
Rivendell through Moria to Lothlorien, 389 miles from Lothlorien down the
Anduin to Rauros Falls and 470 miles from Rauros to Mount Doom. (Those
locations should sound very familiar to “Lord of the Rings” fans.) The hobbits
averaged 18 miles a day, but if you walk (or jog, as I sometimes do) five miles
a day, it’s possible to cover 1,799 miles in a year.